Saturday, November 10, 2018

In my previous post to this blog I talked openly of how
it was our intention to absolutely immerse ourselves in everything Sydney had
to offer; we hit the ground running and we haven’t stopped. While the pace has
slowed considerably over the past couple of weeks, there has been no letup in
the number of social outings. We have met with good friends and former
colleagues even as have spent time “talking shop” with a number of them. The
day job as it were is never out of mind and the mere fact of being in Sydney is
giving me a lot of material with which to work in the coming months. Have I
mentioned how much I really like Sydney? Have I also mentioned that after just
three weeks away from Colorado, we miss our home in Windsor?

It was in my previous post that I observed just how crowded Sydney has become
and how there are people everywhere you turn. Or that the city of Sydney is
rapidly morphing from a village of single level dwellings to massive high-rise
condos (alright, home units and apartments or whatever) are everywhere. It’s
definitely not like Singapore and it’s not anywhere close to being comparable
to Hong Kong and yet, there are similarities at first glance. A day doesn’t
pass when I cannot count more than a dozen cranes dotted along Sydney’s
skyline. All of which is to say, Sydney projects many faces to its audience and
when the audience is mostly tourists the reciprocal responses of “wow!” and
“oh, my gosh!” can be heard time and time again.

If it’s Sydney Harbor you long to see, take all the
time you need. Take the slow ferry to Manly or anywhere else on the harbor for
that matter. As time permits, take the fast ferry by all means but the slow
passage from Circular Quay to Manly, passing the “heads” that lead into the
open ocean, is a time-honored way to soak in the variations on display with
each headland you pass. Sitting atop one of Sydney’s high rise office
buildings, you can quickly see five headlands protruding into the harbor but I
am certain there are many more than five. There has been a lot of work done to
ensure the waters of the harbor are clean and it’s noticeable too – standing by
the wharf in Manly, you can see all the way to the sandy bottom even as sizable
fish swim freely between the pylons.

For Margo and me, it is very much about the people. We
have come to see the sights but we really have been looking forward to hearing
the stories from family and friends we have just not seen for half a decade and
you don’t really appreciate the passage of time until you are reminded at every
turn that you have been missing from the scene for five long years! OK, so we
get the picture now – consider us back. For the time being, at any rate! The
niceties and politeness coming from everyone we have had time to meet is
appreciated so much so that as you might have guessed as of this past weekend,
it feels like we have never left.

A very long time ago the church that the Buckle family
attended – Willoughby Gospel Chapel – happened upon a piece of land out in an
area well to the north of Sydney and only marginally south of the mighty
Pittwater harbor. It’s now a suburb called Ingleside and is adjacent to the up
and coming suburb of Terry Hills. From the earliest years of my childhood,
Saturdays were spent working on the construction of a dwelling complete with
its own giant water cistern built into its foundations that was to be used as a
campsite for the youth of the area. My good friend Dave drove Margo and me to
the campsite and what a huge difference with many buildings on site and on this
occasion, a group of youngsters enjoying themselves on the playing fields now
groomed nicely where once there had only been a pile of rocks!

The rock I am standing on was where we all sat to have lunch every Saturday we
were on site, working. My father threw his energies into the construction of
the dwelling after having finished building our own home in the Sydney suburb
of Lindfield a couple of years earlier. He joined the likes of Liv Clark, Keith
Long, and many others whose names I have now unfortunately forgotten, but this
was always the highlight of the week for me, particularly during the summer
months as there was always time to walk through the bush as the tracks
meandered down to creeks that then flowed into places like Church Point.
Sometimes we made it to Coal and Candle Creek that opened up into a sizable
estuary feeding Pittwater.

Lost in time however were the wartime stories of how troops were loaded onto
the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth in places like Pittwater, as the harbor is
many times the size of Sydney Harbor but off limits to commercial vessels of
all sizes. My father was shooting 16mm video when his activities came to the
attention of the shore patrol and he was arrested as few people of those times
possessed such video cameras. The records say these ships always spent time in
Sydney but it wasn’t always in Circular Quay from what I could determine. There
were even sightings of troops boarding the Queens as far north as Port Stevens
and I sure would like to know about this as according to my dad, they really
didn’t want the enemy of the day figuring out where exactly there leviathans of
the sea were moored.

After two weeks with my brother Gregory and his family
in the northern suburb of Beecroft where we became good friends with Tony over
many cappuccinos in his Beecroft café, along with pizza and pasta, we headed to
the coast. But before venturing any further into this escapade other than to
give you a little hint as to what our new temporary abode was going to be, I
can’t leave the topic of Beecroft without talking a little more about Tony.

He
was a fun guy to get to know and archetypal of the small shop owner that
dotted the Sydney landscape for many years. Even though he tried his hand
running a bigger restaurant his heart was definitely in the small shop intimacy
that comes with being able to serve coffee, wine and a little grappa. Next
month we will be returning to Beecroft for just a little longer and I sure hope
he remembers us as his coffee early in the morning was the best we tasted in
all of Sydney.

Our trip to the coast took us to the home of David and
Suzanne. David had been a good friend of mine back in my high school days and
part of the reason for the trip down under was to join classmates for our
graduating class 50th anniversary. You may recall my reference to David Roberts
in posts back in 2016 and 2015 as Dave visited us in our Niwot home many times.
When his enthusiasm over his new home bubbled into emails and texts, we knew we
just had to find time to visit him and the generosity of Dave and Suzanne bubbled
too as they gave us the opportunity to spend a couple of weeks with them in
their new abode atop Bilgola Plateau.

To say that Margo and I were poorly
prepared for the welcome we received would be an understatement as Dave and
Suzanne opened their doors to perhaps the most magnificent home we have ever entered.
Anywhere – and that includes the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild, a French
seaside villa located at Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat on the French Riviera
that we have visited numerous times!

If you have ever listened to a couple of verses in the
Carly Simon song, You’re so Vain you will likely be familiar with the lines:

Well
I hear you went to Saratoga
And your horse, naturally, won

Having lived in Saratoga, California, for as many years
as she had done - yes, I know, a different Saratoga - I always think of these lines whenever talk of Saratoga comes
up but how little I knew. You see, this past week was a big occasion for
Australia. The first Tuesday of every November is when the nation comes to a
stop. It’s time for yet another running of the Melbourne Cup. It’s a time to
party and a time to dress up. And it’s a time too to have a little flutter on
the horses.

Dave took as to a fancy establishment in nearby Newport where the
ladies competed for prizes in a fashion category and there were many
outstanding examples of fashion that was easy on the eye. But it wasn’t the
fashion parade that attracted Margo’s attention so much as the ticket she
bought for the sweepstakes – a tradition dating back to who knows when –
whereby you buy a ticket and draw a card or pretty much any slip of paper to
see what horse you will be supporting when it comes time for the big event.

Margo
drew horse #23 and with absolutely no knowledge of what it all meant, settled
in to watch the race unfold with a glass of bubbly in her hand. As the horses
turned for the final time in traditional fashion, the race to the line was a
spectacle taking up the full width of the Flemington course. And out of
nowhere, blindingly fast along the outside of the track, came #23 and it went
on to win, naturally. I don’t think Dave quite believed it and kept pointing at
the big screen telling Margo, I think that’s your horse! It was Margo’s horse
after all … as they say, she scooped the pool and it was onto a magnum of Veuve
Clicquot! The photo atop this post captures that winning feeling perfectly I
think. We now have been informed as to who won the fashion contest – but we
left early before the ladies of Newport got a little out of shape. Or so we
were told after the event wrapped up.

In the previous post I wrote of how it’s hard to put up
an argument against an invite to join friends, colleagues and associates for a
little bubbly but how little we knew as in Sydney, with the Aussie dollar
faring as poorly as it is against the almighty US dollar, it seems a day barely
passes where somehow or other a glass of bubbly finds its way into our hands.
We have caught up with our really good friends, Dieter and Chris who invited us
to their penthouse condo overlooking the harbor at Balmoral even as we have
caught up with the “old boys club” of former Nixdorf folks all of whom had
worked at one time or another for Dieter who had been Nixdorf’s Managing
Director. Truly, a big thanks to Kevin who seems to muster a good group of
folks whenever we are in town.

But perhaps the highlight of the week came when we had breakfast in the
northern suburb of Hornsby, followed by a train ride to Beecroft to pick up a
couple of items, then on to North Sydney for lunch with former IDC Vice
President, Len Rust, before catching a ferry to Manly for a stroll along the
Manly Corso and then it was dinner in the beachside community of Collaroy with
Paul Matthews and his lovely wife Georgina. Paul joined IT only a few months
before I did so we have much the same backgrounds but Paul went on to create a
business that still sets a benchmark for very clever entrepreneurship. On the
other hand, I actually met Georgina long before that as the two of us both
worked at Overseas Containers Limited in Bridge Street, deep in the heart of
Sydney’s Central Business District (CBD). Who knew that after the decades had
passed we would once again be able to catch up to share stories and be able to
laugh hard and long well into the evening hours.

Whether it was time spent with my brother Greg and his
wife, Robin, or simply hanging out with Toni in his coffee shop. Whether it was
the fun times we are now having with David and Suzanne at their fabulous home
or with Dieter and Chris – and yes, their Balmoral condo is simply amazing with
its views straight out the heads of Sydney harbor. And too, whether it is with
colleagues Paul and Georgina or Len or Kevin there is only one constant. The
sheer joy in being able to catch up on five years of happenings; of five years
of absence and yes, five years of well, so much has happened, hasn’t it! In
closing it is all too easy to simply sit back and say well, we could have done
all this over the phone or via skype but in reality, we simply couldn’t have.

It’s the sum of what we see in the faces of our friends, what we feel in the
smell of local cooking and the sights of an ever changing vista. It’s all of
this and much more … yes, these are big times but they are also the best times
and for that the caste of hundreds we have met all played a role and for that
we are forever grateful. The hospitality of Sydney is being showcased for us
and there is no way we could ever say enough thanks to communicate all the joy
we have experienced.We are just so
thankful to you all!